Blog Entries tagged 'Corporate Counsel'

How Do You Decide What is a Vital Record?

james.crane@altep.com — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:00:00 +0100

All organizations need a disaster recovery plan. This plan will need to account for everything from personnel and leadership to equipment and facilities that will need to be put back in place following a disaster. In addition to accounting for these obvious items, an organization will need to ensure that its Vital Records are also secure and able to be recovered.

These days, maintaining multiple secure copies of documents is not a problem. However, the key issue is how [...]

Milberg-Weiss Round Up

james.crane@altep.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:00:00 +0100

Most attorneys have at least casually followed the Milberg Weiss scandal that has been playing out for the last couple of years. The felony settlement by one of the class-action leaders included some troubling details that many people suspected, but hoped were not true. The partners at Milberg, Bill Lerach and Melvyn Weiss, admitted to felonies and settled for $75 million.

The firm admitted that over the decades, seven former partners paid sec [...]

Five Reasons Companies Should NOT Conduct Their Own Forensic Investigations

james.crane@altep.com — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:00:00 +0100

Corporate counsel is always dealing with the challenges of controlling costs and providing their corporate client with the most defensible position. One question that always comes up is "why shouldn't we just collect our own data?" It's a good question. Many corporations have an IT department staffed with talented and available personnel.

The short answer is that sometimes, in-house IT is the "logical" choice [...]

This Day in Legal History

james.crane@altep.com — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:00:00 +0100

Corporate legal departments dedicate anywhere from 5 – 50% of their legal department assets to the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

The first federal law of copyrights, the Copyright Act of 1790, was signed into law by George Washington on May 31, 1790. The goal of [...]

Corporate Counsel Magazine Names Qwest the Nation�s Top Legal Department

james.crane@altep.com — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:00:00 +0100

As a Denver-based attorney, I was proud to see that Qwest and their General Counsel Rich Baer were given the honor of Top Corporate Legal Department in Corporate Counsel. In the Denver legal community, Mr. Baer is known as hard working attorney, and an all-around great guy. I’ve always been impressed that Qwest was able not only to withstand all of the lawsuits and inquiries that swirled around telecom earlier in the decade, but that they came out if it that much s [...]

Getting Started on the Big Case With Altep

james.crane@altep.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:00:00 +0100

Partnering with Corporate Law Departments on large-scale actions has been Altep's specialty for more than a decade. As a result, we have planned and executed many of the world’s largest e-discovery cases to a successful conclusion. So, when corporate counsel comes to us with a matter and asks “Ok, what do we do?” we have the answer - complete with point-by-point itemized checklists of what to do, timelines, cost and performance considerations, etc.< [...]

ABA Corporate Counsel Committee Annual CLE Seminar Report

james.crane@altep.com — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:00:00 +0100

The ABA Section of Litigation put together a great event in Scottsdale, Arizonalast week. The programs were interesting and I met many outstanding attorneys. The event opened with the General Counsel Forum discussing some of the challenges of advising corporations, maintaining the legal department, and working with outside counsel. Cornell Boggs, General Counsel of Coors Brewing Company, had some riveting commentary about being solicited by law firms hoping to represent Coors. In a nutshell, if [...]